


Imperial Helpers

by naevia_nadia



Category: Star Wars Episode VII: The Force Awakens (2015)
Genre: Cuddling & Snuggling, Fluff, Humor, Hux is weird but we still love him, I lose once again to the soft kylux pit, Kylo loses to a cat, M/M, Soft Kylux, the First Order Academy has better mental health services than my own university, the origin of Millicent and 17 other felinxs, the return of Kylos' irrational fears, you can pry Hux's love for felinxs from my cold dead hands
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-10-10
Updated: 2016-10-10
Packaged: 2018-08-21 18:30:11
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,787
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8255981
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/naevia_nadia/pseuds/naevia_nadia
Summary: After an infestation of rats aboard the Finalizer, General Hux comes up with the perfect solution to get rid of the pests once and for all.  Unfortunately for Kylo, the "solution" sticks around a lot longer than the rats ever did.





	

**Author's Note:**

> I love cats so fucking much y'all I have 5 of them at home. 
> 
> Millicent is based on my own Stanakin; you can see pics of him on my blog! He's the fattest and fluffiest cat this side of the galaxy :D he's orange and I love him 
> 
> Anyway, so this fic was born out of a story I heard of a farmer using goats to "mow" the grass around a lake, where a lawn mower can't exactly reach. They would pen the goats in one area for a week and move them around the lake border until the grass was trimmed down; it's a great and natural way to keep the grass short for the health of the waterway :D
> 
> Enjoy this fic my lovelies <3 I can't wait for this weekend when I can finish up two (three?? maybe!) other fics that I am very excited to publish >:)

\-------------------------------------------------------------------------

 

“So that’s your plan.”

 

Hux doesn’t look up from the datapad on his desk, even at Kylo’s flat declaration. “Yep,” he replies before grabbing his mug of caf and taking an obnoxiously loud slurp from it. 

 

“Seriously?” Kylo still can’t believe that this is how Hux will address a pretty serious problem for a ship, if he does say so himself. 

 

And he should know. The _Millennium Falcon_ was basically a flying trash compactor, much to young Kylo’s fear and Solo’s glee. His experiences aboard its squalor were nothing short of absolutely terrifying.

 

Hux sets the caf mug down. “Yep,” he repeats. His calm tone is completely at odds with what Kylo felt last night, when he snuck back into his room for a shower after a late-night workout. He hadn’t wanted to wake Hux up, who decided to pass out there rather than his own quarters for some unknown reason, considering Hux hadn’t been sleeping properly for the past week and told Kylo he “would eviscerate him” if he woke him up. 

 

Kylo likes to think that one of his best skills is being quiet, though Hux would disagree. He had tiptoed perfectly through his bedroom, keeping one Force ear on Hux’s unconscious thoughts for any sign of him waking, so Kylo would have time to bolt out of the room. He had opened his dresser quietly, grabbed clean clothes without a peep and made his way to the fresher in a silent glide. 

 

The fresher door was loud when it slid open, and Kylo flinched at the sound, turning his head on what he could see of Hux from his blanket cocoon. Hux didn’t stir. Kylo breathed a sigh of relief before going inside, stripping off his workout clothes as he did so. He left them on the floor to deal with in the morning, before Hux woke up to rage about their presence but after Kylo felt a bit more like a person than he currently did. 

 

Kylo was savoring this shower because after a week of strictly sonic showers, his water ration had finally reset, after he and Hux had wasted it all during their experimentation with shower sex. Both Kylo and Hux had been displeased when mid-blowjob, the water cut off, leaving Hux staring up at Kylo with the most disappointed and irritated look on his face, multiplied with his wet hair plastered onto his forehead and the inclusion of a cock in his mouth. 

 

So yes, Kylo was going to savor this shower. He could already feel the warm water cascading down his neck, his back, as he took his hair out of its bun and shook it out. He closed his eyes and hummed an old smuggler song as he stretched his sore muscles in preparation for the soothing warmth of the shower. 

 

Kylo put a hand on the shower door and slid it open, his eyes still closed. He stepped into the shower, going over the small lip by memory, and slid the door shut. Still humming, Kylo turned on the shower, quietly moaning at the feeling of water hot water hitting his forehead. He tilted his face into the stream, savoring this quiet moment in his hectic life. 

 

The quiet moment didn’t last long. Behind him, Kylo heard a strange skittering noise on the shower floor. Kylo ducked his head out of the water stream and opened his eyes, groggily confused at the sound, before turning to see where the sound was coming from. 

 

Upon sight of the accompanying lifeform in his shower, Kylo forgot everything Hux threatened to do to him. Kylo screamed and the little rat-thing did too, shrieking as it clawed at the shower wall in a desperate bid to escape. It ran towards Kylo, seeking escape that way, and Kylo, in an act of pure reflex, shoved his hand out and Force threw the thing into the wall, where its shrieking was immediately silenced. 

 

Kylo was left with his rapidly beating heart, panting breath and warm water running down his back until the shower door slid open with a squeak, and Hux, barely clothed and holding his blaster, looked in with a wild expression. All Kylo could do was stare back. 

 

Hux’s wild expression turned to confusion as he looked into the shower, obviously looking for a human sized attacker. Then, when his gaze fell to the floor, he said something that Kylo never wanted to hear again in his entire life, ever since his experience on the _Falcon_. 

 

“Oh, fuck, not _again_.”

 

In his office, Hux continues with a nonchalant tone. “Star Destroyers have pest problems all the time. I heard from General Urion that he had success with getting rid of them using this method. It’s less expensive than anything else, that’s for fucking sure.” Hux takes another long sip from his mug, reminding Kylo that Hux once again got little sleep the previous night. 

 

“Listen, Hux, don’t you think you should invest in something more…reliable?” Something that will kill the rats immediately. Something that will ensure that Kylo will sleep tonight without any fear of a rat scuttling across his bed. 

 

Hux scoffs and sets his caf mug down before turning back to his datapad. A stack of them rests at the edge of his desk, stacked in a precarious way to free room for more of Hux’s shit. “Reliable? Ren, these animals are designed as natural killing machines, from their night vision to their claws to their lack of collarbones.”

 

“Felinxs don’t have collarbones?” 

 

Hux gives Kylo a flat expression. “Obviously. How do you think they get into crawlspaces so easily?”

 

Kylo has to confess that he never once thought about how a felinx got into a crawlspace. His thoughts, unlike Hux’s apparently, are always directed towards more important matters. He tells Hux that he never knew that interesting fact about felinxs. 

 

Hux shakes his head. “Of course not,” he says under his breath. 

 

Kylo can _feel_ Hux’s superiority complex rising up. “Do you _seriously_ think you’re better because you know that?” he asks flatly. Kylo likes to think his mask increases his ability to speak in a deadpan, though at the expense of all other emotions.

 

“Did you _seriously_ schedule a meeting with me just to bitch?” Hux retorts before signing off on something with a flourish. Somehow, Hux’s deadpan is always better than Kylo’s, even without a mask. “Look, Ren, it’ll get rid of those rats in a natural way, so medical won’t be swamped with accidentally poisoned people, and in a way that benefits the Order’s pocket.” Hux then smirks, and before he speaks, Kylo knows he’ll be pissed off by the end of it. “And if you’re really so terrified by those rats, I’ll go into the fresher with you, even hold your hand while you piss. We wouldn’t want to wake up the ship with your screaming.”

 

There’s a long pause as Kylo tries to think of a clever retort, but in the heat of the moment, he can’t think of anything. Kylo knows that later he’ll think of the perfect phrase that will destroy Hux where he sits, but right now his brain gives him nothing but static. 

 

He settles with a personal favorite of his. “I don’t like you.” 

 

“Me neither,” Hux says back, as he always does. “Anyway, if you’re done being a pest, then please piss off. I’m busy. We need at least a thousand felinxs for this to work, and I haven’t contacted all of the breeders in this sector yet.” 

 

Kylo turns around to leave. Right before he exits Hux’s office, Kylo finally thinks of a way to get back at Hux for his comments. If Hux loves the felinx pest exterminators so much, then Kylo will give him a taste of what felinxs are like. Hux won’t be able to stand the animals for a day, not for the month it will take for them to rid the _Finalizer_ of those rats. 

 

Kylo lifts his fingers, and with a quick motion of them and a call to the Force, knocks Hux’s precarious stack of datapads over. They clatter on the floor noisily, though they don’t drown out Hux’s muffled expletive, then louder expletive as he shouts at Kylo to get back into his office.

 

Kylo doesn’t give him the opportunity. Instead, with a little wave of his fingers behind him, he ducks out of Hux’s doorway. Right before the door slides closed behind him, Kylo hears a sound than can only be produced by someone throwing a datapad at a wall. 

 

And Kylo should know. He’s destroyed plenty. With a laugh still crackling through his mask, he walks down the hall, already thinking of how frazzled Hux will be for the next month and what a glorious sight that will be. 

 

\-------------------------------------------------------------------------

 

It’s been five weeks since a thousand new “Imperial helpers”, as Hux calls them, were released onto the _Finalizer_ , and to be quite honest, Kylo misses the rats. At least the rats had the decency to keep out of sight (usually) and out of Kylo’s way (always). 

 

No, the felinxs are far worse. They spill out onto every deck, lounge in every available heat lamp, trip stormtroopers and officers alike as they dart around the hallways in search of the elusive prey the _Finalizer_ was infested with. 

 

They’re even on the bridge, lounging on control panels that are marked inactive for as long as the felinxs are there. Kylo sometimes sees officers stop what they’re doing at their own stations, walk over to one of the friendlier looking felinxs and either pet them with a tentative hand or full-on shove their face into the felinx’s belly. And for some strange reason, though Hux is standing right next to them, he says nothing. Doesn’t even look at his officers who are obviously disregarding bridge rules to coddle these creatures. Most of the time he’s the one petting the damned creatures, ticking them under their chins or petting their sides, while his other hand takes care of his own station. 

 

“We can’t interrupt their work, Ren,” Hux said when Kylo broached the topic of the felinxs with him. “Something _you_ need to learn,” Hux added before forcing Kylo out of his office. Once the door slid shut behind him, Kylo turned around with a sigh to make immediate mask-eye contact with a fluffy black felinx with most of its ear missing. It narrowed its eyes at Kylo. It didn’t blink once, not even after Kylo leaned forward with a growl. 

 

After an officer hurriedly walked by with incredulous confusion barely concealed in her thoughts, Kylo realized that maybe getting into a staring contest with a felinx wasn’t the best use of his time. With another growl, he looked away from the stubborn creature and stalked away, hoping to find something to destroy that didn’t have a cat lounging on it. 

 

When Kylo returns to his quarters after his day, he’s too tired to even be that pissed that a felinx decided to requisition his cowl after he took it off for his workout. With a sigh, Kylo keys in the code for his quarters, too tired to summon the Force and open the doors that way. He barely picks up his feet as he shuffles into his bedroom. After so long in the helmet, Kylo’s neck burns with an encompassing ache; perhaps he could convince Hux to rub his neck tonight? That would be nice. 

 

Kylo looks to his bed to see if Hux is back from his shift on the bridge yet. He’s there, lounging on the bed in a way that’s so familiar to Kylo. 

 

Except there’s something that’s not familiar. Instead of just Hux being on his bed, there are no less than ten cats, curled into balls asleep or stretched out on the bed with their toes flexing to show their sharp claws, with an additional ten curled up around the room. 

 

There’s even one on Kylo’s pillow, shedding orange fur where it sleeps curled in a way that shows Kylo its fluffy white stomach. One of Hux’s hands pets its belly. His fingers curl into the white fur before tugging away, taking some fur as he goes, before Hux starts the process all over again. 

 

The sight might have made a more awake and patient person sigh in domestic contentment, but for Kylo it just makes his pissed off, mostly for the fact that _he_ should be the one being petted like that. 

 

“Hux,” Kylo begins flatly. The mask makes his voice crackle with menace. “This needs to stop.”

 

“When I was in the Academy,” Hux begins in a complete non sequitur. His voice is muffled through the pillow his head rests on. “There was a place you could go for ‘stress relief’.” Hux sniffs a laugh before moving his hand from the felinx’s white belly to its orange head. The felinx sniffs Hux’s hand before bumping it with his nose. Hux curls his fingers against the creature’s face. “Yes, that’s what they called it.”

 

A felinx mews softly somewhere next to Kylo, but he doesn’t turn to look. He doesn’t want to see even more evidence of Hux’s apparent hoarding. “Hux, what in the shit are you talking about?”

 

“Outside, it was all grey durasteel, but inside it was completely different. Not soft, mind you, we’re not the fucking Republic, but the heat lamps were always on in there.” Hux doesn’t give any indication that he heard Kylo’s completely valid question. “And everywhere, on the shelves and sofas and floor, were felinxs.” Hux goes back to twisting his fingers in the orange cat’s belly fur. “Most of them looked like utter shit, but that was because we picked them up as strays on spaceports. They were ugly, but they were soft and warm and a perfect way to end a shit week.”

 

“Are you high or something?” This wouldn’t be the first time Kylo walked in on Hux philosophizing after he partook in a particular kind of tabac Hux smuggled on whenever he got shore leave. 

 

That makes Hux scowl up at Kylo from the pillow. “Maybe.” Then, he beckons to Kylo with the hand not on the orange cat’s stomach. “Come here,” Hux says before returning his hand to the area right in front of his stomach. 

 

In lieu of anything else to do, Kylo goes to Hux. As he gets closer, he can see that Hux only stripped off his uniform tunic and boots, leaving him in his undershirt, pants and socks. And yes, just like Kylo thought, there’s a felinx curled into a tight ball right in front of Hux’s stomach. It has stripes of brown and black fur running down its sides. Kylo can barely see the sharp point of the felinx’s canine tooth peeking out from its jaw. 

 

Kylo stops behind Hux and waits for his next orders. He’s too tired to fight with a high Hux right now, especially over something as trivial as felinxs infiltrating his bedroom. 

 

“What are you doing?” Hux asks before turning his head behind him with a confused narrowing of his eyes. “I thought I told you to come here.”

 

“I am here.”

 

Hux rolls his eyes. “No, I meant _here_ ,” he says with an accompanying wiggle of his hips. 

 

Hux left just enough space for Kylo to fit maybe half of himself on the bed. With a sigh, Kylo lifts his hands to his helmet and pulls it off, following with the rest of his layers until he’s dressed down to his leggings. Then, somehow, he fits himself to Hux’s back. One hand rests curled under his arm while the other rests on Hux’s hip. It’s not like there’s anywhere else he could put it. 

 

Yet Hux makes the decision for him. “No,” he says before taking Kylo’s hand off his hip and putting it lightly on top of the felinx curled up against its stomach. “Here.” Kylo freezes as his hand lands in the creature’s short, soft fur. 

 

The creature responds to Kylo’s hand with a strange trill. The sound makes Hux huff out another laugh through his nose. “That’s how they say hello, you know. With that sound.” Hux then tries to imitate the trilling noise, with little success. 

 

Kylo sighs. His breath rustles the short hair on Hux’s neck. “Hux. This needs to stop.”

 

“What?”

 

Obviously Hux has some grand relationship with felinxs spanning back to his Academy years, so Kylo is going to have to approach this slowly. What he knows about Hux in the Academy is sparse, as Hux doesn’t like talking about his time of ‘suffering in shit I didn’t need to know anyway’. “You can’t keep a thousand felinxs aboard the ship.”

 

“But they’re so _useful_.” Hux tightens his hand around Kylo’s, which still rests on the slumbering felinx in front of them. 

 

“They _were_ useful, Hux,” Kylo says back. He feels a felinx paw kick him softly in the head and takes a deep breath. “They got rid of the pests, but they need to go.”

 

“But they’ve raised morale by almost two hundred percent. Both for stormtroopers and officers, which is hard to do because they’re completely different in what they need to thrive.”

 

Trust Hux to spout work performance percentages even when high. “They may raise morale, but they’re everywhere. They get in the way of the bridge, the entire ship. They can’t be there, Hux. You know that.”

 

That makes Hux sigh. He brings his hand away from the orange cat on Kylo’s pillow to curl under his cheek. “I know.” But then, just as Hux is about to sink into disappointment, his thoughts whirl in a way that’s almost dizzying to Kylo. “Wait. We can put them in one of the social rooms. Convert it like they did in the Academy.” Hux lowers his voice to a mutter. “Yes, we’ll just have to get more heat lamps, more soft things and then—”

 

“Hux. You have a _thousand_ felinxs on this ship.”

 

Hearing that number makes Hux pause. Numbers always got to Hux faster than any other kind of reasoning. “Yes. A thousand is a lot for this purpose. But I can’t just leave them on a spaceport somewhere.” Hux’s voice gets very soft. “They’re Imperials now.” 

 

Kylo buries his face in Hux’s neck, so he can better reach Hux’s hear. “Ok, how about this,” he begins, very quietly. “You keep fifteen cats for the room, and then we can sell the cats back to their breeders. Or we can pass them on to another Star Destroyer or planet with a pest problem. That way, they’re still Imperials, and you know that they’re safe.”

 

Hux stays quiet for a while, and Kylo lets him. He can feel Hux’s turbulent thoughts swishing against his own like the felinx tail that keeps hitting him on the foot. 

 

“You said fifteen cats.”

 

“Yep.” Kylo noses at Hux’s hairline, breathing in the smell of his shampoo that’s hidden underneath the felinx smell that covers him. Seems plenty for the ship. Enough to go around for whoever wants to see them.

 

“But there are twenty here.”

 

That makes Kylo pause. Fuck. “Well, how about you pick your favorites?”

 

Hux scoffs. “I can’t do that, not for these felinxs. They are the _superior_ ones,” he says with a haughty sniff. 

 

Of course Hux would rank these felinxs, probably based on their hunting ability or their softness. Yet Kylo knows of a great way to narrow the list down. “How about the ones you’ve given names to?” Kylo tilts his head to the orange cat on his pillow, still snoozing away despite Hux’s inner turmoil and Kylo’s barely repressed fear at fucking this up so badly that Hux decides to get an additional thousand cats. “What about that one?”

 

“Millicent,” Hux says with no pause.

 

“The fuck kind of name…” Kylo says under his breath before stopping at Hux’s irate emotion he can feel in the Force. “Ok, fine keep…Millicent.” Kylo squeezes his hand into the striped felinx’s stomach. “What about this one?”

 

That makes Hux pause, his thoughts grinding to a halt. Then, just as Kylo is going to tell Hux to give this one up, Hux gives him a name, probably the first one he could think of. 

 

“Armitage.”

 

That makes Kylo snort. “Hux, you hate that name. That’s not the felinx’s name.”

 

“Yes, it is.” Hux lifts his hand off Kylo’s to rub the felinx’s velvety ear. Then, he traces down its chin to scratch it. The felinx lifts his head in contentment. “He looks exactly like one.”

 

Kylo would believe that name if it was for the orange cat, but considering the only similarity this cat and Hux have is their frankly alarming slenderness, Kylo doesn’t believe him. “Why would you name a cat after yourself?”

 

“I’ve always wanted a son,” Hux whispers profoundly to himself. 

 

Kylo’s eyes widen at the blasé nature of that comment before he clears his throat. “Alright, well this felinx isn’t your son, so you have no obligation to keep it.” 

 

The rest of the night passes in a similar fashion, until Hux narrows down his list of superior Imperial felinxs from twenty to eighteen. Hux had pushed Kylo into the number eighteen, as he said that number was important to him because he was that old the first time he met a felinx at the Academy. Kylo didn’t understand the correlation, but didn’t feel like talking about it anymore. He was exhausted, and his muscles in his neck had finally relaxed enough for him to get comfortable, unfortunately without Hux’s accompanying neck rub. 

 

The eighteenth and final felinx to be chosen was the scrawny striped one curled up into Hux’s warmth. Armitage. It had barely made the list. 

 

Kylo looks over Hux’s asleep form. He had fallen asleep some time ago, as he and Kylo were thinking of the last names for the felinxs that would stay aboard the _Finalizer_ . Hux had been basically asleep when Kylo suggested Vader for the name of the scruffy black cat at their feet, hadn’t even argued against the name like Kylo thought he would have. 

 

Both Kylo and Hux’s hands are still resting atop Armitage’s stomach. Kylo can feel the felinx’s ribs through its fur, through its small layer of fat and muscle.

 

“You know,” Kylo whispers at the felinx. “I can see you being an Armitage.”

 

The felinx doesn’t wake up. He only curls into a tighter ball against Hux’s stomach, still giving a hint of tooth to Kylo, and settles into sleep once more. Kylo finds himself doing the same thing, curled against Hux’s warm back.

**Author's Note:**

> Tag yourself in this fic I'm Hux 
> 
> If you enjoyed this fic and want to see more Kylux and Star Wars, check out my blog here [@lady-starkiller](http://lady-starkiller.tumblr.com)


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